Following up on our discussion of the literature of 1965, fellow science-and-lit blogger Raghu Parthasarathy writes:
About two years ago, I [Raghu] read a string of books that were all published in 1965. It was a fun exercise and I found some wonderful books I might not have otherwise read (described in this post). Why not repeat this for a different year? I picked 1937. . . . The twelve books I read, mixtures of fiction (9), non-fiction (3), and audiobooks (3); famous and obscure; good, bad, and bizarre:
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. Fiction.
Thieves Like Us by Edward Anderson. Fiction; Audiobook
Journey by Moonlight by Antal Szerb. Fiction.
The Bachelor of Arts by R. K. Narayan. Fiction.
Museum by James L. Phelan. Fiction.
The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat. Fiction.
Jordanstown by Josephine Johnson. Fiction.
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. Fiction.
I, Yahweh: A Novel in the Form of an Autobiography by Robert Munson Grey. Fiction.
The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell. Non-fiction; Audiobook.
The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron. Non-fiction; Audiobook.
The Life and Death of a Spanish Town by Elliot Paul. Non-fiction.
Of these, I’ve heard of the first one but I’ve never read any of it. The Steinbeck and Orwell are classics: I’ve read them both and they were both just great. Maybe now I wouldn’t enjoy the Steinbeck as much, but when I read it in high school I thought it was pretty much perfect. The other nine, I’ve never heard of.
Indeed, Raghu continues:
My first realization when starting the journey into 1937 was that it was hard to find books. There were fewer books published in 1937 than in 1965 or in 2025! I don’t have exact numbers, but searching the University of Oregon library catalog for 1937 fiction available as print books in English gave only 325 titles. For 1965, it’s 674; for 2016, it’s 1146. (For 1516 to 2025, it’s 78016.)
I guess that a lot more than 325 different books were published in 1937, even if you just restrict to this country. (I’m not actually sure of the first U.S. publication date of The Road to Wigan Pier.) On the other hand, 1937 was in the depression, and it was before the paperback revolution. In any given year of the 1950s, John D. MacDonald might have published 2 or 3 just by himself, and in any given year of the 1960s, Donald E. Westlake might have published 3 or 5, and then there were all the other mystery writers, all the science fiction writers, etc etc.
I think once you go past 1945, there are just endless possibilities for excellent, readable fiction and nonfiction books in any year, including lots of obscure gems.
What else got published in 1937? Raghu mentions The Hobbit, which, yeah, that’s a classic for sure. Aaaand, let me look things up . . . I have this book on the shelf, “Making the List: A Cultural History of the American Bestseller, 1900-1999,” by Michael Korda, who at the time was editor in chief of Simon & Schuster. Actually it’s not much of a cultural history at all, it’s more of a slapdash job with a short essay for each decade followed by a list of the Publishers Weekly bestsellers for each year. Korda’s little book was published in 2001 by Barnes & Noble Books.
In any case, I turn to 1937, when the #1 fiction bestseller was . . . Gone With the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell. But this was a special book, it was also #1 in 1936 so we can’t count it here. The #1 nonfiction book of 1937 was How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie. I’ve heard of that book! Actually, I recently read it (in preparation for a new course I’ll be teaching this spring; more on that later). It’s not so readable or interesting anymore–except for what one might call its sociological value–but it’s noteworthy, that’s for sure. Some other nonfiction bestsellers from that year that I’ve heard of, although not read: Mathematics for the Million, by Lancelot Hogben, and The Flowering of New England, by Van Wyck Brooks. I’ve read a review of the latter–maybe by Edmund Wilson or someone like that–; in any case, I expect that both of these would be readable, if boring.
Also in the 1937 nonfiction bestseller list was Present Indicative, a memoir by Noel Coward! That sounds like it could be good. According to wikipedia, “The book was highly acclaimed and became a best seller. It was followed by Future Indefinite. A third volume, Past Conditional, was never completed.” On the fiction list is The Citadel, by A. J. Cronin, which I’ve vaguely heard of but that’s about it. Looking it up online, it seems that book is of some historical interest. Also on the list are fiction by Virginia Woolf and W. Somerset Maugham, but neither was a book I’d ever heard of. It’s hard to imagine that an obscure novel by Virginia Woof was ever the #6 bestseller for the year, but there you have it! 1937 was a different time, and bookselling was a much more upscale business.
I’m not a big fan of Woolf and I’ve never gotten around to read anything by Maugham except for Appointment in Samarra (“I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra”), and I don’t plan to start with “The Years” or “Theatre” . . . hmmm, reading the wikipedia summary of the latter, I’m reminded of the novels of John P. Marquand, indeed I think one of his novels I’ve read is about a playwright, but now I can’t remember which. Let me look up Marquand . . . hey! The Late George Apley is from 1937, and it’s considered to be a classic. I actually find it overdone and boring; I prefer his other novels where the satire is a bit more gentle.
And, now that we’re talking about John O’Hara . . . Appointment in Samarra was published in 1934–and it did not make the Publishers Weekly top-ten fiction bestseller list of that year, being beat out by Good-Bye, Mr. Chips (fair enough), Anthony Adverse (I don’t actually know what that one’s about, but, sure, it’s famous), a minor work by Sinclair Lewis (OK, he could still move books), and Seven Gothic Tales, by Isak Dinesen. She was played by Meryl Streep in that movie, right? And, hey, I just looked up Meryl Streep. It seems that all four of her children became actors! Understandable, I guess, but I’d find it difficult to be in her shadow. When Tom Hanks’s kid goes into acting, sure, I can see that, but he’s just Tom Hanks, everyman, he’s not Meryl Streep, the consensus greatest actress of her era.
Returning to O’Hara, this makes me think that in the 1920s-40s, much of the best writing was published not in books but in magazines. In 1937, Irwin Shaw, James Thurber, A. J. Liebling, etc. were getting started. And Stephen Vincent Benet’s classic story By the Waters of Babylon was published in 1937. (I got that from the wikipedia list for the year.)
What about mystery and crime fiction? Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier, came out in 1938. Damn–just missed it! I’ve never read Rebecca but they still assign it to high school students, and I’m guessing it’s not bad. And Agatha Christie must have written something in 1937, right? Her early books from the 1920s and 30s are said to be her best. And . . . yes, Death on the Nile came out in 1937. I don’t actually find Christie so readable, but she does have some clever plots. Or, to step down the ladder of fame, there’s Rex Stout–he was active in the 1930s. And, indeed, there’s a Nero Wolfe novel from 1937 called The Red Box. Wikipedia shares the following from the reviews:
Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor, A Catalogue of Crime — Stout rarely has Nero Wolfe lured away from home on a case, but in this one Archie does it with orchids. Poisoning at a fashion show is the crime that Wolfe’s method of exhaustive interrogation mixed with bluff is involved to solve. Archie is thinner and less amusing here than elsewhere, but we learn more about Wolfe from himself.
Clifton Fadiman, The New Yorker — Nero Wolfe leaves his orchids for the first time to solve the case of the poisoned fashion model. This one has practically everything the seasoned addict demands in the way of characters and action; you may guess the motive, but the mechanism is properly obscure.
Edmund Wilson wrote that the novel was “somewhat padded … full of long episodes that led nowhere,” and left him with the feeling that he “had to unpack large crates by swallowing the excelsior in order to find at the bottom a few bent and rusty nails.”
OK, doesn’t sound so great. Still, it’s probably a lot more readable and interesting (again, in that “sociological” sense of giving a feeling for what life was like then) than the Maugham and the Woolf. I’m guessing that reading an old Nero Wolfe novel is sort of like watching an old Columbo episode.
And what about Edmund Wilson, that great critic? He did not publish any books in 1937 but I imagine he wrote lots of good stuff that appeared in the magazines that year (but not the above bit about the bent and rusty nails, which seems to have appeared in an essay from 1944).
In summary, 1937 in fiction books: The Hobbit, Of Mice and Men, The Road to Wigan Pier, Death on the Nile. Also Dr. Seuss’s And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, which, yes, is still readable to this day, although it doesn’t really stick in the mind the way the above novels do.
And some nonfiction, most notably How to Win Friends (of historical interest) and Noel Coward’s memoir, which might very well be awesome! I’ll check it out from the library and compare it with Tony Randall’s classic anecdote-filled memoir.
But to get to the best stuff, including great writing that has now been forgotten, maybe you should forget the books and just read back issues of the New Yorker and other magazines of the era.
This all makes me think I should teach a course where students just read things that were written in 1937, or some other single year. I bet there’s some great social science writing from that era. But, to be fair, perhaps any year other than 1937 would be better. Even given all the above, it’s slim pickings.
In any case, the common theme here is that these are books to appreciate for their own sake (good stories, interesting characters, insight into the human condition, etc.) and for the light they indirectly cast on society at the time.
P.S. Raghu also points to this post from Tyler Cowen, What of American culture from the 1940s and 1950s deserves to survive?, but I think that’s casting the net too wide. Taking two decades and considering all forms of culture, that’s just too much, and it becomes more of an exercise of what not to choose than anything else. Focusing on a single year gives us more focus.
I don’t know if he was a good writer or a clear thinker, but Lancelot Hogben has got to be one of the best names ever. Actually, I vaguely recall that Martin Gardner mentioned the Hogben book favorably which is certainly high praise if my recollection is true.
Yeah, Lancelot Hogben is an excellent name.
I note that the 19237 list also gives us some nice names: Zora Neale Hurston, Antal Szerb, Sadegh Hedayat. The latter two seem like names Jonathan Lethem might have made up.
There’s also R. K. Narayan, which reminds me of M. Night Shymalan.
Agatha Christie had two novels published in the UK in 1937:
Dumb Witness
Death on the Nile
Anon:
But Death on the Nile is the famous one, I think.
Sure. “Dumb Witness” is a rather obscure one. Then there is also “Cards on the Table”, whose USA edition came in 1937.
I do not have a middle name or a middle initial and I envy those who do. In the list which is given at the beginning of today’s blog, some authors have a (cited) middle name or a (cited) middle initial. One wonders if this adds, at least subconsciously, some sort of fame due to resonance or mellifluousness.
Paul A. Lper
My first, middle, and last name all start with an A
It’s possibly amusing in a way
In light of (co-)authoring some scientific manuscripts that saw the light of day
More importantly though, I hope that their quality is triple A
I sometimes wonder if they are not, whether that would be okay
I’ve thought about this from time to time, and I think it is hard to say
But, I feel that’s a whole other discussion, I don’t want to lead this one astray
Anyway, thanks for using the word “mellifluousness” by the way
I was unfamiliar with it, and it has been my word-of-the-day
And, I think the name “Paul Alper” resonates, and flows smoothly, I must say
I would have read “How to Win Friends and Influence People” out of curiosity, but being published in 1936 invalidated it! I’m stuck being friendless and non-influential…
Ahhh, another one that was published in 1936 but dominated the bestseller list in 1937.
“I would have read “How to Win Friends and Influence People” out of curiosity, but being published in 1936 invalidated it! I’m stuck being friendless and non-influential…”
Perhaps that’s the exact point at which one can realize
What one truly wants to idealize and materialize
Perhaps in the end
Having no friend
Is just the beginning
To realizing it might not be about winning
Perhaps you’re better of having not read the book
Which may have influenced this exact moment at which you can have a second look
“What of American culture from the 1940s and 1950s deserves to survive?” How about the New Deal consensus and the top marginal tax rate?
Some of us look upon 1937 as a bit late in the game. On my birth day, Wikipedia claims
“On June 22, 1936, Moritz Schlick, a German philosopher and founder of the Vienna Circle, was shot and killed by his former student Johann Nelböck on the steps of the University of Vienna.”
I am reliably informed that other events took place in 1936 and since then, hardly any professor was shot and killed by a former student.
“I’ve never read Rebecca but they still assign it to high school students.” I’ll buy you one of your beloved Jamaican beef patties if I’m ever in New York if you can find a single high school in 2025 that assigns Rebecca to its students! I haven’t read it so I can’t comment on its merits, but the trend for the past few years has been for high school literature classes to assign *zero* novels, just excerpts. My younger son is in 11th grade in a good public high school and I was happy to learn that his class does read novels, but this is just because he’s in the International Baccalaureate program; his teacher sadly told me that the non-IB class doesn’t read full books. (The teachers don’t like this policy, by the way.) The spiral of low expectations continues…
Even at the places that actually teach reading, Rebecca isn’t going to be demographically correct enough to make the cut.
Raghu:
It was assigned to Jakey in 10th grade. That was just a few years ago. I guess I could check with the school and see if they’re still assigning it in 2025.
P.S. You have a poor record on this topic, Raghu. A few years ago you commented, “You clearly don’t have any children, Andrew,” to which I mildly replied, “Kids vary, and you may be right that your kids would not like my answer. But I don’t think you speak for all kids or for all parents.”
That time, though, you offered no wager. This time a Jamaican beef patty is on the line! Or, as we like to say on this blog, 1/5800th of a conference featuring Gray Davis, Grover Norquist, and a rabbi.
I am delighted to be wrong! I am also not surprised by my poor track record of guesses or my poor memory. (Sorry.) I will definitely buy you a lunch if I’m in your vicinity, wager or not! You may have to remind me, given that I will likely forget. At least now this is on the permanent record of the blog…
Coincidentally, though, I was just commenting to my wife yesterday that I hardly ever go to New York, in comparison to other cities. There are never conferences there, at least in my fields, and it’s far away from Oregon.
Thanks for the post!
The best seller in Japan in 1937 was Kawabata’s “Snow Country”.
My first attempt at figuring out what other stuff was published that year failed. I’ll keep looking.
Robert Byron’s The Road to Oxiana is often considered a classic of travel writing (I don’t think it has ever been out of print, but I might be wrong about that). If I recall correctly it influenced Bruce Chatwin, no doubt others too.
Also, Andrew, as a fan of literary criticism and essays, you should definitely dip into Woolf’s essays and reviews even if you don’t like her fiction. She was a reviewer for the TLS for years.
Just Googled and seen that it was included on McCrum’s list of the best 100 non-fiction books of all-time!
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/31/100-best-nonfiction-books-the-road-to-oxiana-robert-byron-travel-afghanistan-persia
Olip:
I clicked through, and . . . McCrum is giving a weird list!
Among his list of 100 best nonfiction books of all time are:
– Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama (1995): huh?
– A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking (1988): generally not considered to be a very good book, I think.
– Ariel by Sylvia Plath (1965): does this count as “nonfiction” at all?
– How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie (1936): hardly a “best” book, but influential for sure.
– Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain (1883): not quite nonfiction but, yes, this one I would include in the greats.
– Nonsense Songs by Edward Lear (1871): you’re calling this “nonfiction”?? Lear himself labeled them as “nonsense”!
– Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb (1807): this one’s fiction, no doubt!
– The First Folio by William Shakespeare (1623): this is also fiction, dude!
– King James Bible: The Authorised Version (1611): another work of fiction. I mean, really, if you’re gonna include the Bible on this list, you should also be including the Iliad and the Odyssey, which also mix supernatural gods with ostensibly real events.
I get that the point of such a list is to stir controversy, but still, c’mon.
Here’s my list, from 2007 of the best nonfiction books ever. I think this is a much better list, also all of them are nonfiction, which is more than I can say of McCrum’s bizarre compilation.
His criteria seem to be laid out here: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/dec/31/how-i-chose-my-list-of-100-best-nonfiction-books-of-all-time-robert-mccrum
e.g. “There’s an additional difficulty. As every week’s roster of online comments indicates, almost any selection of “classic nonfiction” from library shelves that include history, film, biography, cookery, politics, fashion, sociology, art history, reportage, feminism, drama, biology, philosophy, economics and poetry (which I included because poetry is catalogued as “nonfiction” by most libraries) is going to be either perverse and disappointing, or stupid and enraging, or downright baffling.”
I didn’t comment on The Road to Oxiana other than to note that I I’ve read it twice, not because I’m so fond of it, but because I forgot that I read it in 2013! My notes: The author is entranced by the architecture, and mildly amused / annoyed by bureaucracy and logistical challenges. Especially in the first half, lots of casual antisemitism. Somewhat interesting, but not great. Gets better in the second half.
If one is looking for travel writing from that period, “The Valleys of the Assassins: and Other Persian Travels” by Freya Stark (1934) is *much* better.
If a classic is a book that survives the ravages of time (perhaps it was Italo Calvino who said a classic is a book that never finishes saying what it has to say), I wonder whether Raghu, presumably not a professional intellectual historian, would consider that a plan of reading like this is a sacrifice relative to what could have been read?
I will begin by pre-emptively apologising for my bad internet etiquette: posting a comment tangential to the topic at hand. I’m hoping that the audience for this post includes a portion of the relevant audience for my question, and I’ve been struggling to find anyone to talk about this with (except ChatGPT, of course).
I’m keen to start a grift that we’ll call ‘quantitive literature studies’ and I’m looking for stooges to carry the bag when it eventually falls apart.
Literature has been protected from bad data science for too long (modulo some silly things like counting ‘thous’ and ‘zounds’ as a test of authorship), but LLMs are finally breaking down this barrier. I can now use ChatGPT to create an army of eager research assistants to mimic scholarship activities in literature studies; clumsily, but enthusiastically and quickly. I can send them away to do assignments like reading every novel published since 2000 and deciding whether each story has a heritage of narrative structure in Ancient Greek writing from the Classical period. I can then ‘calibrate’ the model by asking ChatGPT to check its work against ground truth examples; did it figure out that the novelisation of The Matrix is based on Plato’s cave (the only example an ignoramus like me can think of and it’s not even a ‘real’ book)? Then I can come up with a headline number and catchy title and go straight to ‘big journal’ publication. “New research proves that one in every three bonk busters you’ll read this summer are cribbed straight from Ancient Greece!” The humanities scholars will be aghast at the stupidity of the enterprise, but management will lean on them to reign in the negging because ‘one in three’ makes a pretty good sales pitch to prospective students.
But I won’t be satisfied there. I’ll bring in more tricks of the trade from epidemiology. I’ll correlate the influence of John Updike on internet hate speech and assign 5% of paternal absenteeism incidence to the Rabbit series. I’ll quantify the flow of narrative ideas from the global south to the global north in modern fantasy writing, thereby proving a shameful legacy of colonialism. I’ll be celebrated by the Paris Review and invited to contribute an opinion piece to Granta.
Seriously though, I would really like to talk with anyone (statisticians, literature experts, linguists, ?) who might be interested in non-grift-y work in this area. One thing I’d be keen to try is to see whether LLMs could find any of the connections between historical texts and Coleridge’s work for which we at least have a strong body of existing scholarship (e.g. The Road to Xanadu by John Livingston Lowes; or what I call ‘scholarship’, needing someone who is actually an expert on Coleridge to correct me if Lowes’ attributions are now considered a bit sketchy, for instance).
Disclaimers: I would hope no one assumes I actually think hate speech or colonialism are trivial issues in some way; my point is simply that editors might be inadvertently more forgiving of poor science if the result is seeming to be drawing attention to an important social issue or righting a wrong. I would also say that I do believe the Shakespearean authorship question is interesting; my point is just that I don’t think we get there by word frequency analyses, or not by those means alone. I would also add that I don’t believe epidemiology is a grift but that it is possible to do quite bad things by using epidemiological methods in bad faith or with naiveity, as many examples suggest is the case for social science as discussed here.
Before you begin this enterprise, I think it might be usful to ask yourself a few questions first. The “drawing attention to an important social issue or righting a wrong” can be done in such a way that it perhaps gets more attention, at least from some. That’s where the following pondering might come in handy:
Think about it, who shouts the loudest to point to some “important social issue” and stuff like that? Is it, for example, the person who works 50 hours a week in the local elderly home? Or is it, for example, the 18-25 year old social science student who spends the entire day talking, scrolling on their phone, and sipping coffee, and who hasn’t worked a 40 hour week their whole life? Truly think about it some more, like think about many of the faculty members at many places of “higher education”. Are many of these people who are talking all day and using obscure and vague and abstract terms and words people who receive money from philanthropists or government organizations? Are they, in fact, kind of like a student being “supported” by their parents to go to university and talk and read and listen all day?
Now, perhaps this literature analysis concerning “socal issues” only works if you are largely like the students and faculty members described above. A more detailed analyses from my own work has pointed to a possible mechanism that may underlie this all. It uses Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs pyramid”, and combines it with personal experience and some added pondering and thinking. What follows next is short version of this all to attempt to make things relatively clear in relatively few words. Here we go.
The students and professors and other faculty members that are focusing on all these “social issues” and shouting loudly to try and get attention for themselves and/or their particular focus might have not have done, or are doing, or need to do, a whole lot to have their bottom two Maslow’s hierarchy needs met. “Physiological needs” (food, water, shelter, etc.) and “Safety and Security” (emplyoment, money, etc.) are being taking care of by their parents or government or society itself without them truly being aware and/or appreciating this. They simply think that’s all perfectly normal, and just happens to magically fall out of the air. It’s kind of like an adolescent complaing to their parents that they think it’s “unfair” that they can’t decide what to eat for dinner or that they can’t stay up until 02:00 AM and play loud music.
This then may result in them focusing on the next levels in Maslow’s hierarchy, which are “Love and belonging” (sense of connection, family, etc.) and “Self-esteem” (confidence, sense of freedom to express own views, etc.). However, because they have not really dealt with the first two levels in the optimal manner, things are starting to get a bit sub-optimal at these levels. This is because there is no foundation here concerning these people and the first levels of the hierarchy. There is no strong, step by step, process that makes sense and truly makes one ready to deal with a next level. For instance, faculty members often have no children because they wanted to “focus on their career”, older faculty members get divorced and sometimes have a new relationship that’s merely a repetition of the older one which shows immaturity, etc. Students have no real self-esteem, also because they are still relatively young and haven’t developed a mature sense of self. This is all exacerbated by the interaction at universities between the faculty members and students, and faculty members and faculty members, and students and student. It all interacts and ends in the sitaution that leaves you with a bunch of parrots looking around to what the other parrots are shouting and doing the same to try and “fit in” and “express themselves”. If both the student and the adult have the same color blue or purple hair, that might be a sign that something is “off”. If the newly divorced faculty member has a new relationship with someone whose age might be closer to that of the average student than their previous partner, that might be a sign that something is “off”.
Now, this in turn leads to the issue I am trying to make clear concerning your possible efforts. If you recognize anything about yourself in what has been written here, it may be good to think about whether you are the best person to try and “solve social issues” and shout loudly about this all to get as much attention as possible. You see, these students and “higher education” adults might be able to act the way they act because they are focused on the highest level of Maslow’s hierarchy “Self-actualization” (sense of purpose, deeper meaning, sense of morality, etc.) without having truly and/or optimally dealt with the previous levels. That’s it. According to my data, that might be where a lot of this all might stem from.
So, if you ever had a 9-to-5 workweek with 40 plus hours or so. And if you ever had to pay your own rent, or cleaned your own toilet, or did some manual labor regarding your house or place of living. And if you are mature in some minimal way at least, and if you have developed a decently true, and stable identity. And if you don’t ask for money from the government, or some “philanthropist”, or from your parents. And if you can think about things a bit more than just “Why don’t we give everyone a million dollars so everyone is a millionaire! It’s so unfair!”. If these kinds of things apply to you, perhaps you shouldn’t begin with your literature-analysis project.
Thanks for the advice!
I don’t think that one can possibly run a successful grift without at least sometimes convincing oneself that it’s not really a grift. So some of this self-reflection will not be helpful to the project. When a grift is in full effect you become like Wile E Coyote: as long as you don’t look down you can keep on running off the cliff into thin air. I’m not worried about my potential to delude myself into thinking I’m the right person to solve social issues; the independent political authority of the academic epidemiologist was gold plated by pandemic. I’m just not sure that I hate literature enough to condemn it to quantitative study.
Disclaimer: I obviously don’t hate literature and really enjoy the amount and depth of literature-related topics here on the blog. I’m really quite worried that the grift-y version of quantitative literature study with LLMs is what lies in our collective future.
Perhaps it is possible to not self-reflect too much or too obviously. And perhaps it’s good for something to do or show other things. For instance, to inspire some people, or to point to the possible positive things of reading, or to point to the possible benefits of some manual labor to make something, or to point to other things than reading, etc. Take this youtube channel for instance:
https://www.youtube.com/@Nelferch/videos
This person tries and does lots of things: from restoring furniture to making clothes to preserving food to making soup to making some art to making cookies to isolating a roof, etc.
One particular thing I noticed was a video from about 7 months ago in which she made a greenhouse from scrap materials. In the video it seemed that it was hard to do for her, but she persisted, and in the end something was completed. Sure, it may not have been perfect (see a more recent video about that as well possibly), but she persisted and got it done. I thought it was interesting and beautiful and special in a certain way that that specific video ended up becoming the most popular video as of this moment on the youtube channel.